LANSING -- One of the most accomplished and well-respected leaders in Michigan State football history faces a new challenge off the field.

Josh Thornhill, a Lansing native, and his wife, Holt native Katie Thornhill, learned last week that their son Marcus, 5, has an aggressive, inoperable cancerous tumor in his brain.

"It's almost like a game plan," Josh Thornhill said Monday night in a phone interview. "I'm trying to game-plan for the future. But it's so hard because it's something we've never dealt with before."

Since that Friday Facebook post revealing Marcus' diagnosis, the Thornhills have received an outpouring of support.

They need it, Katie Thornhill said, because Marcus is expected to start radiation in a couple weeks. He is scheduled to undergo six weeks of radiation, five days a week, followed by chemotherapy.

Marcus Thornhill, 5, is the son of Josh Thornhill, a Lansing native and former MSU football player.(Photo11: Courtesy photo)

Since Saturday, the support has generated nearly $20,000, ranging from online GoFundMe donations to profits from a children's lemonade stand in New Jersey.

“People have really rallied behind our family, and loved on us, and poured their hearts out to us," Katie Thornhill said Monday afternoon over the phone.

All donations are expected to help cover the Thornhill family's medical and travel expenses. The family, which includes Hannah, 12, and Isaac, 9, lives in Clarksville, Tenn. and is expected to get treatment for Marcus in Nashville, about 50 miles away.

The GoFundMe page to help the Thornhills had raised over $18,000 by 9 p.m. Monday. On Saturday, a lemonade stand operated by the son of a former MSU player and otherchildren in Morristown, N.J. had drawn $1,400.

The children who raised money Saturday for Marcus may reopen the stand this week so they can offer more help, said Joe Savage, one of Josh Thornhill's former teammates.

Former Michigan State football player Joe Savage's 8-year-old son Jaden (left) and his friends ran a lemonade stand Saturday to help former Spartan Josh Thornhill's son who has been diagnosed with cancer.(Photo11: Courtesy of Joe Savage)

Jaden Savage, Joe Savage's 8-year-old son, and several kids in the neighborhood, raised $230 at the stand in four hours. Some of Joe Savage's friends were so impressed they each contributed $460.

"We were selling whatever we could," Savage of Saturday's effort. "It was really cool to have the kids know they are helping."

Several former MSU teammates of Josh Thornhill have posted messages of support on Facebook and his family's GoFundMe page messages of support.

"He was a great teammate and an even better person," former MSU teammate Joseph Patrick wrote of Thornhill. "His family's toughest fight is ahead of them (far tougher than any opponent he ever faced on the field)."

Marcus Thornhill will turn 6 on July 27.

He is part of a family with ties to the Lansing region and Michigan State's football program that date back to the mid-1960s.